The Merge is one of the biggest events in the crypto industry, it is time for the Ethereum blockchain to transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake to make the Ethereum blockchain more scalable, more secure, and more environmentally friendly
This important work has been carried out for many years. It has received global collaboration from industry groups to developers and individual contributors.
With 119 key developers working on The Merge and thousands of programmers contributing to the overall Ethereum protocol, it is impossible to credit any individual person for the evolution of the blockchain. undeniably important in making The Merge happen. Here are 10 people who played a significant role in changing that history.
Aidan Hyman, CEO and Co-Founder of Chainsafe
Aidan Hyman is the CEO and co-founder of Chainsafe, a blockchain research and development company. Chainsafe works on a variety of projects across different blockchains, with Lodestar being one of the company’s projects. Currently playing a key role in The Merge as a consensus client for Ethereum’s proof-of-stake algorithm.
Lodestar aims to make it easy for individuals to staking and verify blockchain data for themselves. Lodestar eliminates reliance on centralized providers to validate the network. The project is open source and written in the popular programming language Typescript, which makes it accessible to the developer community.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin funded ChainSafe for the first time in the development of Lodestar in 2018. Several ChainSafe members were involved in the launch of the Goerli testnet, which ended up being the final testing ground before the launch. The Merge on mainnet
Danny Ryan, Ethereum Foundation Research Fellow
Danny Ryan is a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports Ethereum and related technologies. He is the lead coordinator for Ethereum upgrade rollouts and is often involved in the Ethereum Foundation blog, waiting forprovide update informationAbout The Merge and Ethereum Roadmap
Ryan became involved in the Ethereum transformation in 2017, according to an interview with Ethereum. A16z’s Future publication by himexplain his roleat the Ethereum Foundation to help facilitate conversations to decide the timeline and priorities involved in helping Ethereum be more scalable, safer and sustainable, as well as assist in research and development. to review the recommended solutions.
Paul Hauner, co-founder of Sigma Prime
Paul Hauner is the co-founder of Sigma Prime, an information security consulting firm. He also founded Project Lighthouse, another consensus client for Ethereum, since 2018. Lighthouse project It has raised funding from the Ethereum Foundation, infrastructure company ConsenSys, and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
The Lighthouse team is also involved in the requirements and security analysis. Ethereum’s proof-of-stake consensus, according to its website. Lighthouse specify
Justin Drake, Researcher at the Ethereum Foundation
Justin Drake is a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation who joined in 2017 and founded a startup called Duo Money. according to the informationLinkedIn’s Drake first got involved in crypto in 2013 when he founded it.Cambridge Bitcoin Meetup Group And recently received a lot of public attention on The Merge for his views on the reward staking behind The Merge.
Drake describes his role at the Ethereum Foundation as “constantly updating both internal and public conversations” and coordinating technical and research for the Foundation. The intersection of Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) and consensus according to the interview.
Pooja Ranjan, Herder-in-Chief, Ethereum Cat Herders
Pooja Ranjan is the head maintainer of Ethereum Cat Herders, she also founded the Ethereum news site EtherWorld and worked at Accenture as a Senior Software Engineer.
Ethereum Cat Herders describes itself as a group of people who support the core developers of Ethereum with “project management and other aspects of communication and coordination.” The group has also put together an educational video on the proposed improvements. Ethereum (EIPs) or design documentation related to The Merge, among other topics.
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum
Vitalik Buterin is the most famous Ethereum co-founder by Buterin, a Russian-Canadian programmer. It has played a key role in communicating the migration from proof of work to proof of stake since its launch.design philosophyAs for the new consensus mechanism in 2016, buterin has been routinely since then. By appearing to discuss the Ethereum roadmap and share technical articles with views on a variety of crypto topics.
“I think the transition to proof of stake is very important. for environmental reasons and performance reasons.” Buterin saidLast December during a talk in Buenos Aires. “It’s also an opportunity to make the protocol much better. including faster transaction confirmations and make the network more efficient and adds support for the light client.”
Tim Beiko helps support the protocol for the Ethereum Foundation.
Tim Beiko is a lead developer for Ethereum, joining the Ethereum Foundation in 2021 after switching from a product manager job with ConsenSys.
Beiko is the glue that holds the Ethereum developer community together in many ways by holding developer conferences that focus on important discussions on network upgrades and improvements. Includes many updates needed to prepare for the transition to proof of stake.
Beiko is the one who let us know injulyRegarding his mid-September goals for The Merge, he also played a key role in helping drive the Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559 (EIP-1559), part of the London upgrade, which introduced a new burning mechanism for the protocol.
Preston Van Loon, co-founder of Prysmatic Labs
Preston Van Loon co-founded the Ethereum-focused infrastructure company “Prysmatic Labs” in 2018, working with Raul Jordan. Van Loon previously worked at Google.
Van Loon’s company is currently working to develop Prysm, the most popular of the four main consensus clients used for proof of stake, with Prysmatic initially focusing on a scalable solution called sharding, which would be an expected upgrade to Ethereum. that will happen after The Merge
Ben Edgington, Head of Teku Products at ConsenSys
Ben Edgington is the founder and head of products for Teku consensus client. Edgington decided to focus his efforts on scaling Ethereum and proof of stake in early 2018.
“That day six years ago I had no idea it would take us so long to get to proof of stake,” Edgington wrote in a blog post. “The journey was longer and more difficult than anyone thought, but The Merge has finally arrived.”
Mikhail Kalinin, Lead Research Fellow at ConsenSys R&D
Mikhail Kalinin is Lead Research Fellow at ConsenSys and is one of the longest working developers on Ethereum. Kalinin started working on the Ethereum client in 2015, before mainnet launched, as he writes in the ‘ConsenSys’.blog post of ConsenSys
Kalinin was involved in several key technical steps in making The Merge happen, including publishing.offerfor the Executable Beacon Chain and contributes to the requirements of the Merge.
In a recent tweet, Tim Beiko cited Kalinin and Danny Ryan as two key figures associated with The Merge, saying “they are truly creators.”